


Secrets from the Winds

by zanzibar



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Once More with Feeling, So Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 22:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanzibar/pseuds/zanzibar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sometimes James misses Paul so much he has to hide his face under his pillow while they talk because the emptiness of his bedroom is more than he can bear."</p><p>In which James takes his pregame nap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets from the Winds

**Author's Note:**

> The video referenced here doesn't exist anywhere but in my brain.
> 
> Title stolen fair and square from M83's "We Own the Sky"

They celebrate their 6 month anniversary in January, in separate cities that neither of them live in. Playing the game they love far from the one they love. 

They don’t celebrate the “new normal” so much as they adjust to it. Paul proposes in May. James gets traded in June. They get married in August. By September they live in 2 different cities. The longest they’ve lived under the same room since they got married is 16 days.

They adjust. Slowly and carefully. Learning to be married and make married decisions but leading what often feels like almost entirely separate lives. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes they tiptoe around each other. Sometimes they talk for so long that Paul’s phone battery dies in the middle of the conversation.

Sometimes James misses Paul so much he has to hide his face under his pillow while they talk because the emptiness of his bedroom is more than he can bear.

But neither of them ever wonders if it was a mistake. 

By the time January rolls around they’re not terrible at it anymore. They don’t see each other enough, but NHL salaries mean plane tickets aren’t out of the question, even when sometimes a $300 flight only represents 18 hours together.

In a hotel room on Long Island James props his iPad against one of the extra pillows in his room and queues up the Pens app. He’s stretched out on his stomach, working his way toward a pre-game nap. Content for now to settle in and relax to the familiar cadence of game day previews and post-practice comments for a team he doesn’t even play for anymore.

He watches a video of Mike Johnson’s media availability and tries to identify the reporters based on their voices. He gets distracted by a text from his mom and free lives on Candy Crush and doesn’t really pay all that much attention to Sid’s post-skate comments other than a level of routine that comes from the oh-so-familiar rhythm of Sid’s always-media-ready voice.

The third video is one of those arty things that the social media and web teams are getting better and better at as each year progresses. This one a collection of footage from the Penguins recent trip across Western Canada. Videos from pre-game skates and highlights from games and clips of the guys getting on buses and off planes. All knit together and set to vaguely familiar music. The videos speed in and out. Sometimes in fast-forward and sometimes in slow-mo, until it feels vaguely like James has been part of the travel, like he’s on a week-long road-trip right alongside the guys.

There’s literally 2 seconds of actual footage, buried a time-lapse of the team walking out of the hotel, guys filing out a pair of generic sliding glass doors and onto the bus to the rink. They’re dressed for game-day, ties and jackets, Sid’s long winter dress coat swirling around his feet as he mounts the bus stairs. Most of the guys carrying cups from either the continental breakfast inside or the cheesy coffee cart setup in the hotel lobby.

Paul’s midway through the footage, after Sid but before a still sleepy-eyed Geno. Muffin balanced on top of his coffee cup, the watch James gave him for his birthday 2 years ago peeking out from the cuff of his jacket and the thick cut of his wedding band, the wrap of platinum stark against the winter-white of his fragile midwestern skin. A symbol wrapped around his finger, wrapped around his coffee cup, right there, walking by the camera.

James rewinds that one moment enough times that even with his callused fingers he can precisely find the split second before the clip starts.

He’s never been happier for the single-room rule than the second when he precisely pauses the iPad so it provides a clear picture from the clip and then uses his phone to figure out how to take a screenshot. Nobody sees his fist-pump when the screenshot is just as clear, an indelibly preserved moment all thanks to the miracle of technology.

It’s probably silly really.

There’s a thousand pictures of them already on his phone and on his iPad. A thousand actual moments of their lives captured together. There’s pictures of their faces squashed together in one frame at the lake and pictures from dinners and vacations and lazy nights on the couch. There’s practically a ready-made slideshow of the moments that mark their relationship. 

There’s scowling selfies from Paul when they were trying to figure out how to be together in different cities. Paulie leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, a position so familiar James can almost picture himself leaning against the opposite counter, coffee cup in hand, smirk toying across his lips.

There’s a series of pictures of sleepy Paul, cocooned in his bed, snapped under duress during late night phone conversations when they’re too exhausted for Facetime but James still needs to see Paul’s face.

But there’s something about this picture in particular that compels him. It’s nothing earth shattering. It’s nothing more than a frozen moment in Vancouver. A fleeting glance into Paulie’s life practically a month ago. They’ve seen each other twice and racked up a day and a half worth of hours on the phone since then. 

Maybe it’s the symmetry of what Paulie did that day and what James will do when he gets up today. Because in about 2 hours James will roll out of bed and into the shower. He’ll wake up under the spray and pull on one of the suits that used to share space with Paulie’s in the walk-in closet in a house he's learning not to think of as home. He’ll grab a coffee on his way down for that last kick of a wake-up call and when he climbs the steps on the bus for the short ride to the rink, there will be an identical platinum band wrapped around his finger.

James leaves the picture open and the screen propped against the pillow while he falls asleep, unprepared for how much that one frame can fill his heart, even when they’re a thousand miles apart.


End file.
